Her mind spun as she tried to figure out exactly where everything fell apart. She’d never messed up this bad before. Her memories of the night were as botched as the job had become, all twisted and chaotic, and she didn’t have time to unwind them before she heard her pursuers coming for her.
Their wings made a terrible flapping sound against the wind, and she could see them in her mind’s eye. They were massive and colored like stone – because that’s what they were.
Years ago, Rhiannon had awoken on Saturday mornings to a short-lived cartoon called “Gargoyles.” She’d enjoyed the artwork and story lines and absolutely loved the voice actors since so many of them were so closely tied to Star Trek: The Next Generation. But at the time, she’d had yet to come across phantoms and Icarans, vampires and Nightmares, or dragons and wraiths. She’d had yet to realize that she wasn’t alone, or that magic touched anyone in the world other than her.
Now she knew better. But the idea of gargoyles had come and gone along with the cartoon and hadn’t really resurfaced for Rhiannon but for the occasional fleeting thought she would have upon looking up at the Chrysler building or a really old library. It had never occurred to her that along with vampires and dragons, gargoyles might be real too.
You learn something new every day, she thought now, her internal voice dripping with bitter sarcasm.
I’m going to die tonight, she thought next. It was one of those feather-light fleeting thoughts that managed to carve its red-hot way through your brain despite its wayward flight. It was a weird twist of fate that she had set out to vandalize and destroy contraband owned by bad guys she had long ago lumped into the category of E.B. – evil bastards – who provided weapons to soldiers in Sudan and the Congo who killed women and children and now she was about to be destroyed by something that had nothing to do with any of them.
The warehouse owned by the E.B. had unfortunately been located directly across the street from a building occupied by what she could only liken to a horde of gargoyles. Apparently they didn’t like the fact that she’d seen them, and now they were out to keep her quiet about their existence. That was her sum up, anyway. There was little time for much more deliberation on the matter.
The ensuing madness had seen Rhiannon going through the warehouse, destroying as much as possible, while fighting off men whose bodies felt like rock under her kicks and punches, who didn’t seem phased in the slightest by anything her telekinesis threw at them other than the largest objects, who were immune to the lightning she called down upon them or the fire she set on them, and who weren’t even affected by the bullets she had finally fired off from the gun she kept – just in case.
It had been a harried, uncontrolled, terribly loud battle that managed to rid her of her mask, which they’d torn from her face, and forced her to flee the burning building for all she was worth. Suddenly she was running for her life under cover of night, sincerely hoping that none of the onlookers she’d seen gathering across the street had seen her clearly or filmed her on their smart phones.
She was the only one any of them would have seen. The gargoyles had taken to the skies.
And now they were here.
Rhiannon crouched a little lower in the alley where she hid and looked up toward the space of night that stretched between the two buildings on either side. A few faint stars peeked through the blanket of pollution and darkness, and a distant plane blinked across the carpet of black. But there was no other light, no other movement.
The flapping stopped – and Rhiannon held her breath.
“She’s nearby.”
“I sense nothing.”
Rhiannon’s eyes widened when the voices carried enough to be heard. They were on top of the buildings, somewhere fifteen to twenty stories up, and searching for her. She had never been so grateful for the black clothing she wore as she was now.
“I managed to mark her before she escaped. I can feel her… somewhere….” Voice number one was younger; she could tell that much.
“You’d better be right. She’s seen us. We can’t let her go.” Voice number two was older.
Think, damn it! Rhiannon gritted her teeth as an arc of some kind of acid-burning poison moved through her left hip and up into her abdomen. It felt like cold fire, like dry ice, riding along the nerve endings of her lower body.
He marked me, she repeated. Marked me, marked me…. She looked down at the claw marks, and realization struck her. He was tracking her by the wound. She needed to heal herself. If it was the last thing she did, so be it. It was her only chance. She was well hidden where she was. If she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, and he could no longer detect her nearby, he would move on. They both would.
She would live.
“This way,” voice number one instructed.
Footsteps, distant and fleeting, drifted toward her on the night wind.
“She’ll make a fine addition to the horde,” said voice number two. “It’s been too long since we brought in new blood.”
It’s now or never. Rhiannon peeled off her left glove, placed her hand near the open, bleeding wound on her thigh, and then laid the glove back over it to hide the light that would come from her magic.
She closed her eyes. Behind the darkness of her shut lids, she imagined her leg whole again. She imagined her skin unmarred, and her blood clean and free from poisons or unwanted magic. She imagined that she was no longer sweating with the pain moving through her system, that her heart was slowing, that her lungs were no longer aching.
There, in the blessed forgiveness that was sometimes fate, her body mended itself. She felt her skin stitch, felt the easing of the pressure in her head, felt her lungs open slowly and softly, and felt her heart settle down into a gentle, even rhythm. It was bliss. She’d read once, in an eBook by one of her favorite authors, that there was no greater pleasure than the cessation of pain.
It was so true.
Rhiannon chanced an exhale, soft and wonderful, and opened her eyes to once more look up. The footsteps had ceased. She could see nothing beyond the outlines of the building edges, and there was no sound from above.
She waited.
Again, she found herself holding her breath. What if it hadn’t worked? What if they’d seen her anyway?
“What is it?” It was voice number two.
“I don’t know. I can’t sense her anymore.”
“Maybe you didn’t mark her as well as you thought you had.”
There was a sigh of frustration, a pause, and then voice number two said, “This isn’t good. If she spreads the word about us….”
“They’ll think she’s crazy,” said voice number one. “Trust me. No one will believe her. And if she surfaces to talk, then we’ll find her, and she probably knows it, so I doubt she’s going to chance being found.”
There was another pause, Rhiannon continued to hold her breath, and then voice number two said, “You’re probably right. Humans don’t believe in anything that defies logic unless it’s got do to with religion.” Another pause as the footsteps started up again and began to take the pair a little further away. “Shame, though. She was something special.”
There was a beat of heavy, powerful wing against air, and Rhiannon jumped just a little. The beat came again and was joined by another set of wings. She waited, unmoving and listening, as the massive wings carried the gargoyle males further and further away from the building rooftops above her.
Very slowly, as if at any moment something else would go wrong, Rhiannon stood, pushed away from the wall, and stepped out of the shadows.
She took a moment to compose herself, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, and centering her thoughts before she opened them again and peeled off her other glove before stuffing them both into the pocket of her Burberry leather jacket. Her body fell into habit automatically, following procedure even as her mind ran over the night’s events, scraping through them as if combing a lake for danger spots. She needed to isolate anything that might bring trouble to her
door. Or to Mr. Verdigri’s.
Once she’d finger-combed her hair, spritzed on perfume, and unzipped her jacket to reveal another expensive shirt and necklace, Rhiannon looked down at the massive blood stain and tears in her jeans.
There was no helping that one. There was nothing she could do, and it was a dead giveaway to trouble. Anyone looking at her would wonder. They would notice. They would remember. And if the fit hit the shan later on, she would come to mind.
She sighed heavily and pulled her cell phone out of her other jacket pocket. She hated doing this. It was like admitting defeat. But sometimes that’s exactly what happened: You were defeated. That was life.
Rhiannon dialed her employer’s number and waited for him to pick up the phone. He did so on the first ring, and before she could say anything, his voice cut in.
“Rhiannon, are you okay?”
She blinked. It took her a little by surprise. “Yes,” she replied, knowing enough to at least answer the question right away.
“Where are you?” he demanded next.
“Near the corner of third and thirty-third.”
“I’m sending Frank. Stay where you are and stay out of sight.”
Verdigri hung up, and Rhiannon placed the phone back in her pocket. Then she waited. As she did, she thought of the buildings she’d walked past during the course of her life in New York. There was one, not far from where she now hid, that she’d always marveled at because of its gargoyles.
She couldn’t help but wonder now… did Hotel Bedford’s stone faces and wings and claws and fangs have some sort of bearing on reality? Were those carved figures and the creatures she had just gone up against at all related?
Not that it mattered.
She was in a world of trouble. Things had gone monumentally pear shaped that night, and there was some cleaning up to do.
Rhiannon looked up when a pair of headlights flashed past the alley and she heard tires ride over the bump of the sidewalk. That was her cue. She fled the alley and raced toward the limo at a fast pace. Frank already had the back door open for her. He glanced at her leg, gave her a meaningful look as she climbed in, and then shut the door tight behind her.
First thing was first. She needed to see her boss and determine how much of her botched operation had ended up on film, if any. And then they needed to learn as much as possible about gargoyles – and how to avoid them.
Chapter Eight
“I shouldn’t have sent you out last night.”
Mr. Verdigri stared into the distance, his expression contemplative and remorseful. Rhiannon leaned forward from where she sat across from him at their small round table in the atrium.
“Mr. Verdigri, why would you say that? You had no idea this was going to happen. We didn’t even know gargoyles existed until last night.”
He shook his head and met her gaze. “But I knew something would happen, Rhiannon,” he said, too soft. “I knew because, yesterday was the day….” His voice trailed off and he looked away, suddenly stricken. She could at once tell that he was unable to talk for fear of losing control of his emotions. For fear of breaking down and crying.
Yesterday was the day, he’d said. Rhiannon worked the words over in her head and tried to put two and two together. Yesterday was the day….
Then she had it. Oh my God, she thought, feeling like a complete and utter fool. Yesterday had been the anniversary of the day, no the night, that Verdigri’s daughter had been abducted by the man who would rape and murder her.
Yesterday was a day filled with trauma and regret for her employer. Every day was a day filled with trauma and regret. There wasn’t a moment that went by that he didn’t think of his little girl and the evil that befell her. But on that day, of all days, the memory was so much more potent.
And it hadn’t even crossed her mind until now.
She really had been in her own little world, distracted by her dream, the events of the masquerade gala, and the night that followed. Distracted by the stranger in black with the blue, blue eyes.
“Mr. Verdigri,” she said now, choosing her words carefully as she leaned further forward and placed her hand over his arm to squeeze gently. “Every moment that we wait, sit and do nothing, and allow complacency, another innocent is harmed. Standing up, fighting back, and doing the right thing – this is what your daughter would have wanted. Not just even on that day, but especially on that day.”
She waited a heartbeat. Two.
Very slowly, her employer turned toward her and once more met her gaze. Little by little, he smiled. Then he nodded, and patted her hand. “You’re a good seed, Miss Dante.”
He often switched back and forth between calling her by her first name and her last. It was usually an indication of changing mood. Which he now proved by taking a deep breath, straightening in his chair, and turning to a number of files that had been left on the table. He grabbed the first one and opened it.
“Now let’s see what my men have managed to learn about these gargoyles of yours.” He perused the contents of the first file while Rhiannon grabbed the second and did the same.
“Well, so far everything here seems to confirm what I learned tonight,” she said. “They’re secretive to the point of xenophobia. They’re by and large male; I didn’t see any females there, though this could just mean that the females were elsewhere or weren’t expected to do any fighting. They inhabit older buildings, especially buildings with gargoyle markings on them. And they’re pretty much immune to every damn thing under the sun and moon.”
“You say you tried everything?”
“Throwing really large objects at them had some small effect, the way stone can be damaged if it’s slammed into by something big. But other than that, not much made a difference. I even shot one of them.” She shook her head and shrugged, “Nothing.”
“Then that would confirm what it says here. Apparently they are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. They tend to live even longer than vampires.”
“Well….” Rhiannon placed her fingers to her lips and recalled the stone color of the gargoyles’ skin when they took to the skies. “That would make sense if they’re rocks. Not much lasts longer than rocks.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Verdigri, which always reminded Rhiannon of Spock from the original Star Trek.
“They look human once they separate from the building. Or, at least they chose to tonight.” She took a deep breath, sat back in her chair, and recalled the night step by step. “I arrived at the warehouse at around one a.m., and there was no one around. But I heard something across the street, and I thought it was someone opening a window.”
Of course, it was imperative that Rhiannon never be seen during one of her operations, so she’d hidden in the shadows and looked up, expecting to see someone stick their head out of what looked like a very old and renovated apartment complex, possibly from the 20’s era. “But no one opened a window. Instead….” She felt a little chill of realization when she recalled what she’d seen. “Instead, two men landed on the rooftop. I could see their outlines perfectly against the moonlight. They had massive wings.”
“Mmm. One of the legends in these files claims they can change any part of their body they wish, moving it from flesh to stone as they see fit.”
“Ah,” she nodded. “That would explain why it hurt so bad when one of them punched me. It felt like I was getting hit with solid rock.” Because she was.
She shook her head and went on. “Well, I must have made some kind of sound, even though I don’t remember doing so. Because they turned around and their eyes were like red search lights. All of a sudden, I had four red lasers pointed right at me. I knew they’d seen me. And for some reason, I knew I wasn’t supposed to see them.”
“So you ran.”
“No, not at first. I slipped into the warehouse hoping I was wrong about being spotted. But when I started using telekinesis to destroy as much property as I could, I got this strange feeling. Like I was being watched.”
> Verdigri made a small sound, part concern and part acknowledgement.
“I stopped and turned fully around to find three men standing against the far wall of the warehouse. Just standing there.” She recalled the odd visual of three men standing perfectly stock still, as still as stone, while she threw things around like a tornado. It had brought her to a halt and made her heart skip.
“Then you ran.”
She nodded. “I headed back out the way I went in.” The gargoyles had left the door open, allowing the noise she was making inside the warehouse to reach out into the street. Rhiannon knew right away that she was probably drawing unwanted attention, but it was a secondary thought. Her main concern was getting away from the strange men.
She ran out through the open door and onto the sidewalk. And that’s when the building across the street morphed before her eyes. She skidded to a stop as shapes separated from its walls. Those shapes grew and took on the forms of living, breathing men. More men.
She couldn’t run fast enough to escape them all, and there’d been a fight as the men from the warehouse and the men from the building caged her in and tore off her mask to expose her. Rhiannon didn’t like being exposed, and she most certainly didn’t like being cornered.
Despite the onlookers, she’d gone to town on the creatures, pulling lightning from building clouds, throwing everything from boxes to trash cans to small cars at them, striking out with kicks and punches whenever she could, and at one desperate moment, even pulling her weapon to take a shot at one of the men point-blank. The bullet had made a sound like metal hitting brick and vanished. She tried another, with the same result.
That’s when she realized she wasn’t going to win this fight. The larger, and hence more draining, telekinetic attacks put a dent in the flow of her attackers, but there were too many gargoyles and she only had so much strength. She needed to concentrate on getting away.